Well, hello there, my much neglected blog and that one reader I still have, maybe! This is going to be a little long and rambling (shocker, right?) but I promise, there is a point.

A few years ago, Craftsy launched. If you don’t know, they offer online video courses. You buy a course, you have access forever and can re-watch as much as you like. Plus, you can ask questions and communicate with the instructor and other students. The classes are professionally filmed in their studios. They were (and are!) magnificent at creating classes that are focused and well-taught. I like them a lot and have bought several classes.

However. Although I’ve bought several, I’ve only completed a couple of the ones I’ve bought. I’m still interested in the other ones — they look like really good classes. I just never seem to find make the time.

So when I came across Skillshare in January, I wasn’t immediately enthusiastic. Skillshare’s classes are not professionally  filmed — they’re more like the vlogs you can find on various sites (though I have found them to be of reasonably high video/sound quality). But they have a tremendous variety of programming, far more than Craftsy with their focus on, well, craft. Plus, they were running a special to try the service for 99 cents for 3 months, with no obligation to continue after that. 33 cents a month! How could I say no? (Full disclosure — the link above is a referral link and if you sign up you’ll get the same 3-for-99 deal, and I’ll get a free month.)

I paid my (not quite a) dollar and enrolled in my first class, Sketchbook Practice: Grow In Your Art Everyday, with Ohn Mar Win. It was great! Plus, I could watch at 1.5x speed, which I find makes me much less antsy when there’s exposition happening (you can go up to 2x, but that just makes me feel like I’ve had too much coffee). I’ve since enrolled in a couple of classes that were duds for me, but I’ve also watched a couple more that I really enjoyed and felt I learned from.

One of those was How To Start (And Finish!) Your Very Own 365 Day Project, with Cynthia Koo. As I was watching, I was reminded of the Make’n’Tell, and how every time I’ve tried to revisit that, I’ve failed (and then not blogged for, like, months after). I really, really do want to start blogging again, though. There’s a lot of stuff I want to talk about! So I decided that I’m going to try a 365 Day blogging project.

This is going to be much more relaxed than Make’n’Tell. Basically, the only thing I have to accomplish is a blog post with a picture every day. Sometimes, it’ll be crafty or a recipe. Sometimes it’ll be about activism and/or something that’s going on in the world that is really pissing me off (or, rarely, making me believe in humanity again). Sometimes it’s just going to be a cat picture. I’m allowing myself to pre-write these, too. So if I don’t actually write a blog post every day, that’s okay. As long as something is going up.

Look, I made a pretty graphic and everything:

I’m going to let that count as today’s picture, but going forward the post is going to have that PLUS another picture. Maybe I’ll even put that in a sidebar…hmmmmmm. We’ll see. I have 364 days more days to get everything set up exactly the way I want it, right?